A document recording distribution of a bequest would probably be at best a
notarized statement in a lawyer's office sent to the executor for his
records and unlikely to survive. Unless in papers filed by the executor(s) in
the probate court (in this case in KY) when they settled their accounts,
there would be no official record anywhere. I was delighted to find an
exception in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, a document drawn up in
1755 to record payment to two Philadelphia flaxseed merchants of money
left them by their deceased father paid through their brother a merchant in
Dublin, but this was not an official court record and it was only by chance
it survived.

Your will is an important document in itself. We know from the will that
Robert left Dunboe as part of the very large emigration from Ulster in 1773
with a good indication of where he lived and the names of the brothers he
left behind. How many wills tell you as much as that? My guess is that
"three miles from Coleraine" put them on the Jackson estate, whence there was
"an almost total emigration" in 1773, which would in turn be part of the
Clothworkers Estate. There are other possibilities. Someone with knowledge
of Dunboe parish could tell exactly which estate papers to go to.
According to William Roulston's invaluable Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors, the
Jackson records (e.g.) date mainly after Robert went to America, but John
and David will turn up in the rent rolls, leases, etc. Find where they
lived and you'll almost certainly have Robert's homeplace narrowed down to a
specific townland, possibly a specific farm. What became of John and David
and their families? Were some of them later migrants to North America? Is
there a Brewster cousin living there yet? This is better than DNA and more
fun.

Did Robert pass through Virginia on his way to Kentucky? There were
numerous Brewsters in and around Rockingham and Augusta at that time.
Immigrants then as now tended to go where Uncle Bob or Auntie Janet lived when they
got to a new country.

I think this is a real long shot, but I have to ask. I have a copy of a
will written in 1798 in Mercer County Kentucky in which the person, Robert
Brewster (Bruster) leaves his estate to the sons of his two brothers who
were in County Derry. The brothers are named as John & David Bruster who
were living "three miles from Coleraine the parrish Dunbo and County of
Derry in the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy three at which
time
I left Ireland". His executors were Samuel and James Dunn Jr. I don't
suppose there is any record still existing to find if any inheritance ever
reached these people in Ireland?

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